Technical Preview: Berlin ePrix

TECH TALK

Posted on: 07 June, 2017

We're four podiums down and hungry for more!

Berlin ePrix marks this season's first double-header - playing host for the sixth and seventh rounds of the FIA Formula E Street Racing Championship Series. Racing for a hat-trick after his back-to-back podiums at Monaco and Paris - Nick will be sporting the winning design from our Driven By Design 2.0 Contest.

We're currently third in team standings, racing to beat our own best ever double-points finish from the last ePrix at Paris.

Our Chief Engineer and Passioneer Vinit Patel talks about how Berlin is a unique challenge for Formula E this season.

Berlin is a unique challenge for Formula E in season three because it's an independently designed circuit layout on the Tempelhof airfield, not dictated by streets, pavements and traffic islands.

The experience we had at the same venue in season one is largely irrelevant because the layout has changed completely, which is good as it varies the set of challenges we face. We have the geometry of the circuit from the organisers to run our simulations as we normally do in the two weeks running up to the event so the drivers will get used to the layout. Based on those simulations we will do all of our energy management work but just like street circuits, until we get there and see if the design has been replicated accurately or not, we will see how much of our learning has been useful.

The final major hurdle will be understanding the surface at Tempelhof, which is unique being a historic WWII runway with high friction surface that's protected by the Tempelhof Conservation Act. It's very abrasive and poses a high demand on tyres: some of the corners are going to accentuate the demand, making it an interesting race from a tyre perspective which is something we don't tend to talk about in Formula E on a regular basis.

The circuit has been designed in a way that potentially allows more overtaking opportunities than a traditional street circuit which is boxed-in and dictated by the architecture of the city or landscape we're in. In this regard, we think there will be quite a good opportunity into turn six, which is very wide. At least three cars can approach that corner side-by-side – how many come out the other end will be the main question! With difficult energy targets there are options to play around with strategy for the drivers and the teams that want to be more gung-ho can prioritise track position and try overtaking, which in the last two events has been quite difficult with a number of incidents, full course yellows and safety cars.

We are going into Berlin in our strongest form as a team in our three seasons, so there is no reason we cannot improve on that. We have been steadily improving and incrementally increasing our pointsscoring positions to cement our third place in the teams’ championship. We need to have more of a focus on qualifying to try and guarantee we are in Super Pole, and in turn guaranteeing that we are fighting for at least one step on the podium – hopefully, the top one.